Tom Verica told fans that talk of those specific scenes were ‘false’

Sad news, Bridgerton fans. Those rumored season 3 deleted scenes between romantic leads Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Penelope Featherington (Nicola Coghlan)? Yeah, you’re not seeing them anytime soon.

That’s because according to the Netflix show’s producer Tom Verica, they were never filmed in the first place!

“Not sure where this all came from but these claims are false,” Verica wrote on Instagram on Wednesday, June 19. “The supposed scenes … don’t exist.”

His words came as he responded to fans in the comments section of a post he shared with behind-the-scenes photos from Bridgerton‘s third season.

Viewers had been speculating that there were several scenes between Colin and Penelope in season 3 were allegedly deleted last minute after appearing in early cuts of the episodes. Those included one in which they were allegedly laying together in bed and talking about publishing Colin’s manuscript, as well another “intimate montage” of the two of them that supposedly showed up in episode 8.

The rumors started after the premiere of the second half of season 3’s episodes, as fans began expressing their disappointment around the lack of intimate scenes between Colin and Penelope.

A Reddit user online even created a graph to show the screen time each lead couple over the last three seasons of Bridgerton. The user “considered time [each couple] spent directly interacting with each other,” and calculated that Colin and Penelope only shared 16 percent of screen time together — which is considerably less time than the romantic leads from previous seasons had together.

In response, a Bridgerton fan — who called themselves “Lady Whistleblower” — started a petition on Change.com on June 14 for Netflix and the Bridgerton production team to release the “intimate and romantic” moments between the season’s leads.

“We’d like Netflix to do [Colin and Penelope] justice, by either releasing the deleted scenes separately, or releasing an extended cut,” The fan said in the petition. “The latter should definitely be possible, considering Netflix has already set multiple precedents in the past.”

The petition cited the 2018 release of Arrested Development season 4 remix and the extended director’s cut of the Bollywood film Jawan (which was released in November 2023) as examples to justify the release of these scenes.

As of June 20, the online petition accumulated over 66,000 signatures, with aims to get 75,000 signatures.

All seasons of Bridgerton are now streaming on Netflix.